Thoughts by Glenn Adamson

“GALLERY 3AE (in progress)” still, 2018

“I just took a SawzAll to this. Which has been really great.”

Nathan Sinai Rayman is talking with me in the project room at Hunter, just two weeks away from the opening of his MFA show. It’s Thursday morning, and he’s wearing a necktie. He is the last of the students I’m to meet as visiting critic here at the college.

Prior to its encounter with an industrial-grade demolition saw, the structure was a white cube. It has now been (as Rayman puts it) “Chamberlained.” He’s referring to John Chamberlain, the automotive expressionist. The formerly neutral structure has been made expressionist, torn through and apart. Contained in its chaotic volume are letters – an E, a Y, a G, a couple of L’s among them. Taken together they spell LARGELY, REGALLY, ALLERGY… and also GALLERY.

This literally deconstructivist anti-monument is one of a trio of spaces that Rayman will be including in his thesis exhibition. Some time ago, when living in Brooklyn with little time on his hands, and less resource, he had set up what he describes as “likely the tiniest, most inconsequential gallery in New York City.” (When he told me this, I said, “what about the Wrong Gallery, the space that Maurizio Cattelan set up in Chelsea? That was just a doorway.” Rayman replied, “ah – but that was consequential.”)

Now he is relaunching the franchise as GALLERYGALLERYGALLERY. (“Really, not a special word. So I’m gonna say it three times.”) In addition to the signage, there will be another set of constituent letters serving as receptacles for flowers, hummus, or chips and dip. The Brooklyn artist Christopher K. Ho will be exhibiting sculptures. Taken together, the presentation is intended to conjure a deadpan self-sufficiency, in the face of art-making and real estate’s problematic juncture.

Now he is relaunching the franchise as GALLERYGALLERYGALLERY. (“Really, not a special word. So I’m gonna say it three times.”) In addition to the signage, there will be another set of constituent letters serving as receptacles for flowers, hummus, or chips and dip. The Brooklyn artist Christopher K. Ho will be exhibiting sculptures in the second space, with a further show in the third. Taken together, the presentation is intended to conjure a deadpan self-sufficiency, in the face of art-making and real estate’s problematic juncture.